Why do this? People who experience psychosis are at increased risk of experiencing problems with their teeth and gums. For example, they are more likely to have teeth taken out, get fillings and have problems with gum disease. We want to empower and support people to protect against these problems.

What we did: Our group set out to develop a practical leaflet offering information around oral health problems in psychosis and simple ways that people can protect against them. We also wanted to highlight the support that services can offer people around their oral health.

How we did this: Service users and practitioners worked together in deciding what information was helpful and important to include in the resource, and how to present it to people. We ran three workshops and a number of interviews. These were very interactive with lots of informal conversations, use of visual materials, drawing out creative ideas. Service users and staff were therefore instrumental in developing and designing the final resource. In the future, we would like to support mental health services to share this resource with their service users.

For a copy of the RIGHT FROM THE START – KEEPING YOUR TEETH IN MIND leaflet please Click Here

We promote a normalising approach to understanding psychosis. We believe experiences and beliefs commonly regarded as symptoms of psychosis are often highly understandable reactions to adverse life events. Our primary aim is to develop ways of reducing the distress of people with these experiences, as well as developing ways of restoring their autonomy and dignity.